


Detours

by takethisnight_wrapitaroundme



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Mortal, Canonical Character Death, Community: theoldguardkinkmeme, F/M, Family Drama, Implied/Referenced Suicide, POV Nile Freeman, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, except not really cause I hate that AU, on behalf of my country i apologize to you sir i beg for your pardon, the idea of honest-to-god belgian matthias having to eat shitty american waffles pains me in my soul, this was supposed to be short but yours truly can’t resist a happy ending when it comes to these two, vague ideation in nile’s case but a very real attempt in book’s case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29226468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethisnight_wrapitaroundme/pseuds/takethisnight_wrapitaroundme
Summary: She looked at him and she wanted to believe that life would get better, even as he was a constant reminder that it could always get worse.Written forthe promptNile/Booker +Nighthawks.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 26
Kudos: 73
Collections: Book of Nile Collection!





	Detours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaybella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaybella/gifts).



> You can thank a dreary rainy day for this one. Please note the tags; this fic got a lot darker (but also happier!) than I originally intended.

Nile had a good memory for faces. She had to, given the hours she worked. Day shifters were strictly waitresses, but once night fell and the clock ticked past midnight, she became something else. The place demanded it of her: to get through the evening hours, you had to be able to spot trouble at the door, and know intuitively the best way to deal with it. The graveyard shift required _more_ , and maybe that’s why she’d been willing to take it on from day one. During the day, she could get lost in the rush—of breakfast, of lunch, of crowds and noise and chatter. But during the night, she never had more than a few tables to look after. She was left with her wandering thoughts and the memories she was trying to forget and a future she couldn’t begin to even dream about.

It was nothing compared to being shot at, or watching an entire convoy be destroyed by IEDs, but it wore her down just the same, which was exactly what she needed. The mental effort to keep herself sane on shift was the only thing that let her fall asleep come the morning. On nights she didn’t work, she barely slept. It was good to keep busy when the city went dark. Good to have a place to show up at, and people who would notice if she didn’t.

Jarheads and their structure—there was a love affair that would never sour. She’d left the military six months ago and yet, as the saying went, it hadn’t left her.

She couldn’t go back. She wouldn’t. But she hung on to the pieces of it anyway, trying to salvage something from the wreckage of wasted time as she fought a new path forward.

That path, it seemed, was littered with loneliness. Those were the kind of people that came in at two and three and four AM—lonely people. They didn’t talk as much as she’d expected they would, though. She had been worried, after her first noisy shift, that every evening would be filled with heartbroken people dribbling out sob stories as she poured coffee and dropped off plates. But that evening was a fluke—the cook had said as much while they closed up.

 _Never heard people talk so much in my goddamn life_ , he grunted as she closed out the register, and to this day those ten words were the most she’d ever heard the cook string together.

Apart from the high school kids out after curfew, or their college counterparts carb-loading after a night’s drinking, the place was usually quiet. Lone men and women were scattered about, nursing their coffees, sawing through their waffles, and generally minding their own business. Though there were a number of regulars whose faces Nile grew to recognize—and who no doubt recognized each other—but her regulars avoided each other as if they were mortal enemies. No eye contact, no chatter, nothing. They put booths and booths of empty space between themselves and the next patron, making it so Nile had to traverse the entirety of the dining area to dole out proper service, even if there were only three people seated.

Sometimes she tried to muster annoyance at these city-dwelling hermits, but it never quite ignited into anger. If she hadn’t had this job, she knew she’d be just like them. Sitting alone, staring at nothing, wasting away sleeping hours.

She did just that sometimes, at the other location across town. At first she’d gone to spy on her doppelgänger, to size up the competition so to speak, but she felt no competition. The older Indian man who worked the graveyard shift across town on her nights off was nothing like her. And what were they even competing over? A desolate landscape of unfilled tables and sad sack customers. Sticky syrup strains and a hissing griddle. Nothing, in short—but somehow everything too, because Nile had so very little outside of work.

Sometimes, when the nights were particularly quiet, and it was just her and the laconic cook in the back, she found herself thinking that she should’ve died over there, out in the sand. Fighting for nothing and no one and carrying a badge of destruction known the world over. Death out there—it had a rightness, one that was matched only by its futility. Sometimes she found herself longing for it anyway, if only because the final end of life was easier for her to accept than this mindless, pointless middle.

She never spoke those thoughts aloud, though, for she knew what the replies would be.

Her mother would say she should go to church.

Her brother would say she should see a specialist.

Her CO would say what he always said: pack up and move out.

Onto the the next mission, the next deployment, the next war. There would always be another war, and the fact was both comforting in its sureness and exhausting in its inevitability. When the latter began to outweigh the former partway through her third tour, she quit.

And now here she was stateside, pouring coffee for drunks.

They weren’t all real drunks, of course. Most of them were recovering—she could tell by the way they fidgeted, some even toying with their little colored chits. They were proud, and scared too. She always made sure to save her best smile for them, since she knew how even the tiniest kindness could tilt the scales away from annihilation.

Some, though, were bona fide drunks. She kicked the worst ones out, with the help of the wordless but very burly cook. She let the quiet ones stay, both because she pitied them and because she was well aware that with just a few more wrong turns, she could easily become one of them. It was nice to know she’d have a place to go to once that day came.

There was a regular that she thought of often, whose face she knew well, whenever she felt her own control slipping away. He drank whiskey like water, though he looked too young to be a lifelong adherent. The first time she saw him dump the contents of his flask into a half-empty coffee mug, she nearly kicked him out on the spot. She had a policy of not making exceptions for such things, but for some reason that night, even the thought of having such a fight—for it would doubtlessly escalate into a fight—made her very tired all of a sudden. So she let him drink his coffee flavored whiskey at the counter and she went about serving her other customers.

When she got around to him, he ordered the special without so much as looking at the menu. When she dropped it off fifteen minutes later, he stared down at the plate like he couldn’t begin to fathom where it had come from. She spent the rest of the shift waiting for him to fall off his chair, but he never did. Apparently half a piece of toast and a few bites of a yolky egg were enough to dampen a full flask of whiskey. Or maybe he was just that used to it.

She wouldn’t call him high-functioning, exactly. He never did anything but sit at the counter, nurse his mug of whiskey and coffee, and pick at whatever plate he ordered. He came every week and chose something different each time, and it took four months for her to realize he was simply working his way sequentially through the menu. How he kept track of what he’d last eaten was a mystery to her—firstly because he seemed to always be on the verge of passing out drunk and secondly because he never did much more than poke at any given meal put in front of him. He reminded her of her brother as a child, and the way he would shun any home-cooked meal he didn’t like. He’d gone to bed hungry from stubbornness more times than she could count.

Nile only knew the name of this particular regular because once, when he’d been exceptionally far gone, he accidentally handed her his license to pay with when she dropped off the check. She noticed the error at once, but by that point he’d been coming in for half a year, and she was more than a little curious. So she took the bit of plastic, turned her back as if to ring up his bill, and inspected all the private information it so publicly offered.

_Sébastien le Livre._

It was a very flowery-looking name for such a normal-looking person. And at 43, he was younger than she’d previously assumed. He lived in a nicer part of town than she’d expected, too. She ran her thumb over the beveled edge, wondering after that name. It sounded French. Or at the very least, French-speaking. In all the words they’d exchanged, she’d never detected so much as a hint of an accent. He was just a standard white man, the same as all the other standard white men. Only difference being that perhaps his passport was red instead of blue.

She turned back and handed him his license with a reminder that he couldn’t run out on a check so easily. She half expected his _Sorry_ to come out as _Désolé_ , but no. Either he wasn’t that drunk or she’d bought into a silly stereotype.

He paid with cash, as usual. He wasn’t exactly a generous tipper—at least not considering the zip code she now knew he lived in—but he always paid regularly and he always rounded up to the nearest full bill, and for that alone, she liked him. There was nothing more annoying than carrying around change at the end of the night.

He always brought a book with him when he came in at one or two or three AM, but he rarely read. He carried it like another person would a wallet or a pair of keys—an essential item, no matter the journey or the destination.

They talked about books sometimes, if the nights were exceptionally slow. She came to learn that he had a degree in literature, though when she asked what he’d done with it, he demurred. Not out of humility, she thought, but out of self-preservation. It made her wonder if he really was someone out in the world—a writer himself, maybe, or a teacher at the university. Some kind of expert in his field.

It wasn’t so far-fetched, she thought. Plenty of experts were drunks. This country itself had been formed, again and again, by old drunk white men. It didn’t make him impressive and it didn’t make him interesting, but there was something else that kept bringing her back to his part of the counter whenever things were slow.

Beyond the alcohol and the loneliness, Nile could recognize her own thirst for self-destruction in him long before he ever spoke of it. She didn’t know if she kept an eye on him because she was worried he was going to jump off a cliff, or because she simply wanted to be there when he did it—to see how quickly he splattered, and whether she should follow.

Four months turned into six, to eight, to twelve, eighteen, and still he kept coming back week after week. And they kept talking. Sometimes about nothing serious at all, and sometimes about things so serious she couldn’t believe she was saying them aloud to a stranger. It helped that he was drunk most of the time. She could tell herself he’d never remember the things she’d said by the next morning, but every week he proved her wrong. And still, she kept talking to him. About her service, and her father’s service. About the men and women she’d deployed with, and how she couldn’t stand to talk to them anymore. When she told him how she took this job only so she wouldn’t have to be around people, he smiled and said, “I’m people.”

“You’re nobody.”

The words came out thoughtlessly, cruel in their truthfulness.

But he just laughed, sharp and loud, the sound bursting forth from him so suddenly it made her jump. For a split-second, she saw a different person—bright eyes, wide smile, a face that was worn, yes, but still open and eager for the world.

And then it all disappeared. He picked up his mug of whiskey (they’d long stopped pretending he needed coffee to cut it), swallowed, and said, “You’re right.” And though she opened her mouth to protest, to apologize, he shook his head. “I am nobody. And I kind of like being nobody.”

Other customers came in then, a rowdy group of girls and a couple hopeful boys hanging on, and Nile grabbed a stack of menus as they crowded into a booth in the far corner. They were drunk,clearly, but with an imposter’s sheen—they were _too_ loud, _too_ energized, and every peal of laughter or shriek of excitement felt badly scripted. They looked like they were imitating drunks they’d seen on TV.

Nile took their drink orders, ignoring their too-loud whispers that followed her back to the counter. Sébastien was still there, sipping at his whiskey, and though he raised his eyebrows in question, she shook her head at him as she went about gathering their drinks. When she dropped them off, the kids were still arguing over entrees, so she checked in on a few other customers before returning to Sébastien. That unspoken apology from earlier was still burning on her tongue, but she knew he didn’t want to hear it so instead she changed the subject.

Later, she would blame exhaustion and screeching college kids for the volatility of the subject change. But even so—she should have known better. A year and a half they had been talking and they had discussed nearly everything under the sun except one thing. Even in the back of her mind, she had known that his personal life was off limits.

And yet the question came out anyway.

“So do you have any family in the area?”

She watched him stiffen, and just as she was berating herself for putting her foot in her mouth twice in one night, he answered.

“Not here,” he replied. “My family is back in France.”

 _France,_ she thought, adding another bullet point to the dossier of him she kept in her mind.

“That’s far away,” was all she could think to say. Her tired mind was crawling, struggling to settle on a change of topic—any topic. And yet what came out of her mouth next was, “Where in France?”

“Outside Aix-en-Provence. My sons live there with their maternal grandparents.” And then, still staring down at his whiskey, he added softly, “They do not speak to me.”

The admission was so unexpected, and spoken so casually, that Nile was certain she’d heard him wrong. Surely she had heard him wrong.

 _Maternal,_ she thought, sticking onto the word. _Sons_.

Why had she never thought of him as married? Just because he didn’t wear a ring didn’t mean he didn’t have a wife. And _sons_ —how many were _sons_? Two? Three? Ten?

She had to chew on her cheek so she wouldn’t press him for details. She wasn’t a bartender, or a therapist. It wasn’t her job to plumb the depths of her customer’s despair. And yet she couldn’t quite make herself walk away. None of the other customers needed her—they were busy eating, or drinking, or staring out the windows at the deadened city in the dark. She should go in the back, check if the cook needed anything. She should go over to the bathrooms, and ensure that the essentials were stocked.

But instead she found herself leaning against the counter, looking at him in a wholly different light.

“Why don’t your sons speak to you?”

They did not know each other well enough for this to be an appropriate question. But in the year and a half she’d been serving him, she’d seen him at nine different kinds of rock bottom. Perhaps he knew that, and that was why he answered. Or perhaps he’d just hit the tenth.

“Because I abandoned them,” he answered quietly. “My wife died and I… I had trouble living without her.”

Nile felt a chill creep up her back, and she straightened her spine to ward it off. She didn’t want to hear what was coming next, but she also knew there was no way to stop it.

“I wanted to go with her. So I tried to.”

Nile watched his face as he shook his head. A twisted, sad kind of smile was tugging at the edge of his mouth. She didn’t know if she wanted to reach for his hand or bolt for the door.

“My oldest found me. He was fifteen at the time. Very resourceful for his age. He called the ambulance, made sure I was still breathing, wrapped the wounds. He was a regular… What do you call it here? A… boy guide?”

“Boy scout,” Nile corrected numbly. The group in the far booth was roaring with laugher about something, but Nile hardly heard them.

“Yes.” Sébastien nodded emphatically. “That is what he was, a regular boy scout. The doctors told me later that if he hadn’t been there, hadn’t acted as quickly as he had, I would have died. I thought they were just saying it to shame me, to make sure I didn’t try again. Later I found out they were actually downplaying it. He rode in the ambulance to the ER, and after the paramedics stabilized me, they asked him how he knew what to do. How did he know to apply the right amount of pressure, and keep the bandages in place even when they bled through? How did he know not to tourniquet my arms or try to make me vomit?”

Nile didn’t want to hear the answers, but she knew he was too deep in now. He would keep talking whether or not she responded.

“He told them that he had been waiting for something like this, so he had done his research.” Sébastien smiled in that horribly delicate way he had. Like one wrong move and his entire face would shatter under the pressure of exuding normalcy. “Can you imagine? You’re fifteen years old, your mother has just died, and instead of doing your homework or chatting with girls or just _surviving_ one day after another, you’re researching how best to save someone from suicide. Because you know your father’s going to try. And you know you can’t stop him. Damage control—that was the most he could ever hope to do.”

Sébastien paused to sip the whiskey from his mug. Just like they were talking about books or art or the weather. Nile watched his hands, realizing for the first time that she didn’t think she’d ever seen him wear anything but long sleeves, no matter the temperature. Now she knew why.

“There was no discussion after that. Joanna’s parents were at the hospital by the time I was conscious. They had already taken the boys home with them. And they have been there ever since.”

It was clearly the end of the story, but Nile couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

“Do your in-laws keep you from speaking with them?”

She shouldn’t be pressing him, but she couldn’t help it. Nile thought he would stay silent, retreat into himself as he had ever since they’d met, but he surprised her by answering. She listened, and felt the world around them disappearing.

“No,” he told her. “It is the boys’ choice, and always has been. I used to visit every month and wait outside, but… After a while, I learned to stop trying. They did not want to see me, and nothing I did could force them to. Eventually I couldn’t stand living there without them anymore. So I moved here, and I traded visits for phone calls. Those went unanswered too.

“The last time I tried was for my oldest’s eighteenth birthday. I thought, He is an adult now. Surely he will want to talk to his father. Childhood is behinds us, I told myself. We can start anew as equals.” Sébastien shook his head slowly, scoffing at himself. “Of course that was stupid of me. Selfish. François stopped being a child the day his mother died. They all did, I think, not that I bothered to pay attention. I had traumatized this boy enough to last a lifetime, but still I called him, expecting—what? To be welcomed back with open arms?” Sébastien stared into his whiskey and sighed. “It was a very short call. I could tell he was having a party. The music in the background, kids shouting. He did not bother to go somewhere quiet. We had about fifteen seconds of pleasantries and then he cut me off. ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘I am glad you are doing well.’ And then, as if I were trying to sell him something, he told me that he would appreciate it if I never called his number again.” That shattered smile once more. “That was three years ago. I have not spoken to him or his brothers since.”

“I’m so sorry.”

It was the only thing Nile could think to say, and yet the moment the words were out, she knew they weren’t enough.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Sébastien told her. “I’m not saying I don’t deserve it, because I know I do. I’m just saying… It is hard, is all. To be alone in the world.”

Nile chewed on the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t say _I know what you mean._

Because she didn’t, not really. How could she? She didn’t have children. She didn’t have a spouse. She had lost people, sure, but not the way he had. She felt alone in the world, too, butshe wasn’t actually _alone_ , not like he was _._ Her mother was a phone call away, with her ringer always on. And if she needed him, Nile knew her brother would get on a plane for her at the drop of a hat.

Nile wondered if Sébastien had those sorts of people in his life, but she knew just by looking at him that he didn’t. Why else would he be in a place like this, drinking at three-thirty in the morning? Why would he be talking to someone like her about something so private unless he truly had no one else in the world to lean on?

She wanted to tell him he wasn’t as alone as he feared, but she was scared—that he might read too much into her words, or worse, that he’d dismiss them as a charitable lie. But what should those fears matter, she lectured herself, when the very real alternative was that he’d try to kill himself again?

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could form so much as a syllable, she heard a whistle from the far end of the room. The girls in the back booth were waving for her attention, and Nile knew she couldn’t keep ignoring them.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Sébastien.

She walked over to the crowd in the far booth, listened to their complaints, and took their annoyingly intricate orders. When she turned back to the counter, there was nothing left except an empty coffee cup with a crisp twenty-dollar bill tucked beneath it.

Nile sighed, but rang up his bill anyway. Eighteen dollars in tip for a two-dollar coffee was a new record, but she didn’t smile as she pocketed the cash. She thought of warning signs, and that son of his who had learned to look for them. _François_. Would he consider this a warning sign? Handing out money to virtual strangers? Could this be some kind of goodbye?

She spent the rest of the shift with one eye on the door, waiting for him to walk back in.

He didn’t.

For months, she went to and from work, hoping always that the next shift would be when she’d see him again. She wasn’t exactly surprised that she missed him, but she was surprised by how often she thought about him while he was gone. There were other regulars she spoke more to, and saw more often, but there was something about all that he’d shared with her that made his absence so much more noticeable than the others’ constant presence.

More than once, she thought about going to his home, just to check that he was still alive. She had memorized his address from when he’d mistakenly (had it been a mistake?) handed her his license to pay with that one time. He lived on the far side of town, but she could easily take the train over. She didn’t want him to become one of those stories on the news, a body found after weeks only because neighbors started noticing an odd smell in the stairwell.

She told herself not to get involved. He wasn’t her problem. He wasn’t her responsibility. He was just one of many drunks she saw semi-regularly at her minimum-wage job. In the daylight hours, it was an easy enough directive to abide by. Nothing seemed as scary or dire in the daytime as it did at night. But then the nights came around, and he still didn’t show, and she couldn’t tamp down the worry any longer.

Three months passed before she finally gave in and made the trek out to his building. It looked like all the others in the area—nice brick, spotless paint job, well-kept trees out front. There was nothing so ostentatious as a doorman, but Nile knew she was in a nice area. And she knew too that she had no real reason to be there. She stared up at the windows, wondering what she would say if someone questioned her.

_I’m here for my friend._

Was he a friend? He had to be. Why else would she go out of her way to track him down when he went missing? If he _was_ missing. He could simply be done with going to diners at 2 AM. All in all, it was probably healthy that he wasn’t showing up at her work anymore. It would be good for him to keep a schedule like a normal person.

But what if that wasn’t what he was doing? What if he was up in that apartment, thinking about dying? What if he was already dead?

She tapped the buzzer for his for unit. Got nothing. She pressed it again, and again. She tried a few others. Still nothing. She loitered on the curb, pretending to check her phone, until someone walked out of his building.

“Excuse me,” she said, approaching the man, “but do you know the guy who lives in unit six?”

“Only met him once,” the man replied. “Why? Do you know him? Tell me you’re here to pick up his mail.”

“No,” Nile shook her head. “I’m not.”

“Pity. It’s been piling up for weeks.”

Nile wanted to ask more, but the man was already walking away, and she didn’t know how to run after him without looking like a crazy person. She stared up at the building, trying to tell herself that he’d simply moved and forgotten to forward his mail. He’d gotten a job somewhere else or he’d gotten sick of the city or he’d just wanted a change—whatever it was, he was alive. He had to be.

But if he was, then that meant he’d up and left without sparing a single thought for her. Given what she knew of his sons, Nile supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. He was in the habit of abandoning people. And what was she compared to flesh and blood? Still, she couldn’t deny that it stung.

She went back to her other regulars. She served them coffee and midnight meals, and she tried her best to have patience with the ones who clearly needed it. She kept up a steady patter of conversation when it was wanted, but she rarely said anything of consequence anymore. She could feel the wall she was building between herself and other people as it went up, but she didn’t know how to stop stacking the bricks. The wall felt safe, so she let it grow tall and wide and thick and she hid herself behind it.

Then one Wednesday in late August, halfway through her shift, she heard the bell on the door ring. She was in the middle of picking up an order from the cook, but she called out to whoever it was to take a seat, and that she’d be with them in a minute. It was lucky she’d been at her job for so long, because if she hadn’t known the proper way to balance so many plates, she would have certainly dropped them at the sound of his voice.

“Take your time, I’m not in a rush.”

Nile’s head snapped to the side, and there he was—standing by the door in his dark jeans and a denim button-up just as he had a hundred times before. But he looked different than she remembered. His hair was cut short, yes, and his beard was less ragged, but there was something else about him. He looked taller, somehow. Or maybe he was just thinner?

The plates were getting heavy in her hands, so she delivered them to the group down at the end of the counter, rushing through her usual pleasantries of _Everything look okay?_ and _Anything else I can get you?_ without bothering to listen to the responses. She didn’t care. He was there, in her periphery, taking a seat on the other end of the counter.

He was _here_.

Six months since he’d slipped out the door without saying goodbye, and now he was back. It was a good thing the counter was already between them, because Nile felt an overwhelming urge to hug him.

“Thought I’d seen the last of you,” she called as she approached. She felt like she was on some kind of stage. Like everyone was watching, and listening.

“Oh, you know, I tried to stay away…”

He was leaning over the counter, hands clasped in front of him, and it wasn’t until she was standing before him that she realized what it was that was so different about him.

He was sober.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “You look… tan,” she settled on.

He smirked at the euphemism. “Do I, now?”

She nodded, doubling down partly because she was embarrassed but also because it was true. He did, come to think of it, look tan. The kind of tan that came from really being out in the world, and moving around in it in a way she had never believed him capable of before now.

“I guess I am a little tan,” he admitted, glancing down at his hands. “I just got back from a trip.”

“A trip?” Her ears perked at the mention. Could he possibly have been on vacation for the last six months? “Where did you go?”

“France.”

“France,” she repeated slowly, uncertain if she’d heard him right. She could feel hope rising in her, aching to be given a chance to fly, but she beat it back. France could mean anything.

But she also knew that, with him, France was only ever going to mean one thing.

And he was smiling at her.

It was a different kind of smile taking shape on his face now, wider and more sure than any of the breakable, desperate little gestures she’d seen over the last couple years. This, finally, felt like a true smile. This one actually looked like happiness.

“Will you tell me about it?” she asked, breathless in the face of good news.

“Will you pour me a cup of coffee?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You actually want coffee?”

“I do, yeah. Regular is fine.”

She went ahead and poured him a cup, stopping halfway only to have him tell her to keep going. She watched as he took a sip, closing his eyes and seeming to savor it as if it were a delicacy and hadn’t, in reality, been brewed over an hour ago.

She had other customers to look after, but still she stood and watched him, waiting for him to reach for the flask she was so accustomed to seeing in his hands. But he just sat there and he drank the coffee as she’d served it, and after a couple seconds, he took a look at the menu and ordered a waffle.

“Seriously?” she couldn’t help but ask. “A waffle? You really want to eat that?”

“I was planning to, yes. Why? Should I get something different?” He turned the menu over, pursuing the options while she stared blankly at him. “What would you suggest?”

Over his waffle and coffee, and in between her other customers, he told her the story of his last six months. It began a week after they’d last seen each other, when he went to check the mailone day and found a letter waiting for him with a return address in Aix-en-Provence.

He said he had to read the letter three times to understand what it was saying, and even then, he didn’t completely trust his own mind not to be playing a trick on him. But there was a phone number at the bottom of the letter, and when he called it, the line connected. And the voice on the other end, no longer a child’s, didn’t hang up on him.

Théo, his second oldest, had taken a gap year after graduating. And then, when the year was over, he told his grandparents that he wanted to study in the States. And he told his brothers that he wanted to see their father. And then, before anyone could stop him or talk him out of it, he sent a letter. He said he’d found the address in his grandparents’ files, and that he’d found a phone number too, but he’d been too nervous to call first.

“It was lucky, really,” Sébastien told her. “He could’ve sent an email. Could’ve sent a text. But he wrote a letter—something I could touch and look at and be sure was real. His handwriting was just the same as when he’d been a kid, so I knew it was really him. I carried that letter around everywhere I went for a month. Whenever I wanted to drink, I took it out and reread it.”

He had been sober for three months when his in-laws finally let him visit. Rules were made, boundaries were set, and they reserved the right to renege on the deal at any time for any reason. He said yes. He didn’t sleep on the plane. He hardly slept the week he was there; he was so overwhelmed. The last time he had seen his two younger sons, they’d been in elementary school. Théo had been only thirteen.

“What about François?” Nile asked. “Did you see him too?”

Sébastien nodded. A little of the light left his eyes, but he didn’t fall completely into darkness.

“He came for lunch once. We talked a little. I know he would’ve preferred not to be on speaking terms with me, but he put on a nice show for the others. I could tell it meant a lot to Théo that he was there.” Sébastien paused. “I’m pretty sure my father-in-law paid him for his time, too.”

“Even if that’s true, it’s still nice that he made an appearance.”

“Yeah.” Sébastien nodded, and the smile sneaking back onto his face was infectious. “Yeah, it was nice.”

He told her the rest. About how he hadn’t been willing to leave France after a week, so he went home to Marseilles and visited his own parents after seeing his sons. He stayed there for a month, and every day he visited his wife’s grave. He had not seen it since the funeral, but it had fresh flowers the first time he stopped by and he made sure it had fresh flowers when he left. After Marseilles, he went on to Toulouse and Bordeaux and Lyon. He stayed for weeks at a time in each city, reacquainting himself with the country he hadn’t seen in years, before finally returning to the States.

“You didn’t go to Paris?” Nile asked.

He frowned. “Why would I waste time there?”

She laughed at his blatant distaste for the city most people (including herself) dreamed about, and then set about collecting the dirty dishes from one of the empty booths. When she came back and tried to ask him more about his travels, he shook his head and asked instead about her. She shrugged him off, saying she hadn’t been doing much the last six months except what she was doing right now.

But he needled, and eventually she found things to say.

She told him how she’d been reading more, and had tried some of the books he’d suggested. He laughed when she said they weren’t for her. She talked about her family (it felt easier to talk about them now, knowing that he’d seen his), and she told him how her brother would be proposing to his boyfriend any day now. She talked about how she’d taken up painting again,had been working almost religiously on a new piece, and how—she’d never mentioned this to anyone before—she was thinking of maybe going back to school for art.

She did not mention that she’d spent far too much of her free time these last six months thinking about him. She certainly did not mention that she’d made a habit of checking in on his apartment. She did not tell him how she’d feared for months that he was dead, but she did say she was glad to see him happy.

As they talked, time seemed to speed up, and sooner than she’d expected, it was nearly the close of shift. She glanced at the clock by the door, but she didn’t mention it aloud. In the past, he had always seemed to intuitively know her schedule, for he usually left an hour or so ahead of shift change. Maybe he’d been gone so long that he’d forgotten.

Or maybe he was staying behind for a reason.

Five minutes before shift change, as she was going about and settling checks, she got her answer. He had already paid, but he still hadn’t gotten up to go. When she warned him that she’d be out the door in a couple minutes, he nodded, his gaze fixed on his coffee cup. Only the dregs were left, but when she asked if he wanted a top-up, on the house, he shook his head. She was about to head into the back when he called her name.

“I know you’re on your way out, but would it… Would it be all right if I waited for you out front?”

Nile felt a smile taking shape on her face without warning. “Yeah,” she answered, “that’d be nice.”

It was a warm, bright morning when Nile finally stepped out from under the fluorescents and joined the rest of the waking world. When she and the cook rounded the front of the building, Sébastien was standing there by the entrance, hands in pockets, looking anything but casual.

The cook, who was walking beside her, asked loudly, “You okay here, Nile?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d looked out for her where over-interested customers were concerned, and Nile appreciated the gesture now as she always had before. The cook knew she could take care of herself; the offer was a show of affection.

“I’m fine,” Nile told him. “He’s a friend.”

The cook looked between the two of them, but didn’t bother voicing his skepticism. “See you tomorrow,” he said as left.

Nile came to a stop beside Sébastien, and the two of them watched him leave.

“Do I look like a threat?” Sébastien wondered aloud, not looking away from the cook’s stare as he reversed out of his parking spot.

Nile chuckled. “Honestly? I don’t think you could be threatening even if you tried.”

She expected to hear him argue his own merits, but he just shrugged. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Usually she was exhausted after a shift, but today Nile felt energized by his presence. When he asked if they could walk somewhere, she surprised both of them by saying he could walk her home.

“Just to the door,” she added awkwardly, and he nodded like that was already a given.

It was strange to walk beside him after so much time. Nile didn’t think they’d ever stood eye to eye for more than a minute or two in total in all the months they’d known each other. When they interacted, she was always standing and he was nearly always sitting. It was odd to realize, so late in the game, just how much taller he was than her. Odd to have to look up to him, too, but not exactly unwelcome.

They talked more about their families on the walk back to her apartment. He told her about his parents, and she talked about her own. She gently bullied him into more and more information about his sons, and he obliged, smiling all the while. Her walk home had always seemed long before, but on this day it seemed to fly by. Sooner than she would’ve thought possible, they were turning up her street and then just a few feet later, they’d arrived.

“Well,” she said. “This is me.”

Her building was nothing impressive compared to his. An old family home that had been greedily fractured into oddly shaped apartments sometime in the previous century, it was not the recipient of regular repairs. Nile lived on the top floor, and the rest of the units were filled with aimless thirty-somethings like her. She looked at the door and then she looked back at him, and for the briefest second, she thought about inviting him inside.

But there was a prudent little voice in the back of her head whispering, _Don’t you ruin this._

So she didn’t. She smiled at him and she watched him smile back, and then because she couldn’t hold it in anymore, she hugged him.

He stiffened at first, but she did not let go. She had to stretch up onto her tip-toes to hook her chin over his shoulder, but it was worth it. She closed her eyes when she felt his hands come up and support her back.

“I’m really happy you saw your sons,” she whispered. “But I’m really happy you’re back too.”

“So am I.”

She held on tight for a few seconds more and then, only because she knew she had to, she let go. They stood there for a moment, trading awkward glances, until finally he broke the silence.

“I thought about calling you at work, you know.”

“Calling me?” She blinked up at him, heart in her throat. “When?”

“After I got Théo’s letter. And again when I was in France. I thought about calling you almost every day when I was over there, just to…” He scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Just to say hello? To tell you the good news? My children were talking to me again and I wanted to tell someone. And the person I wanted to tell most was you. Is that strange?”

“No,” Nile said, shaking her head. “It isn’t strange at all.” She thought of all those months he’d been gone, and how she’d never stopped thinking about him. “It would’ve been nice to hear from you.”

“Maybe I can give you my number, then. So we can stay in touch.”

Nile felt a smile bloom on her face. “I’d like that.”

She held out her phone, and he entered his number into her contacts. He moved to hand it back, but when she reached for it, he didn’t immediately let go.

“I should tell you,” he said, “I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to show up like I did today.”

Nile nodded, tucking her phone away. As sad as it was to hear, she’d been expecting something like this ever since he mentioned being sober. She’d gotten used to going through her shifts without him. She knew she could do it again.

“I get it,” she assured him. “You need to take care of yourself.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to see you. Because I do. And I don’t want to freak you out, but… you should know that you’re a big part of why I made it through the last couple years. I know it probably didn’t mean much to you. I know you see guys like me every day. But the time we spent together meant a hell of a lot to me. I don’t think I ever would’ve gotten to talk to my sons again if it weren’t for you. So I wanted to say thank you.”

“You sound like you’re saying goodbye,” Nile whispered.

“I’m not. I’m just…” He looked away. “Maybe I’m talking too much. I’ve been awake for a long time. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to say you’re sorry. And the last two years—they meant something to me too, okay?” She didn’t have the words to explain all he’d done for her. But she knew she had to try. “Things have been really hard for me ever since I left the Marines,” she whispered, her voice suddenly much hoarser than it had been a moment ago. She watched his forehead pinch with concern. One of his arms twitched like he was going to reach for her, but then thought better of it at the last second. “Really hard,” she repeated, forcing a steadiness into her voice that she didn’t feel. “And I don’t talk to people about it. I know I should, I know I’m supposed to, but I can’t. I just _can’t,_ because—”

She ducked her chin to her chest, and blew out a harsh breath. She blinked as hard as she could, forcing back the tears that were threatening. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d let herself cry.

“People like me don’t do things like that, you know? We don’t talk to people. We kill people for a living. And no matter what we see, or what we feel, or what we do, we just keep moving. There isn’t time to look back.” She swallowed. “Until there is.”

She meant to say more, she wanted to say more, but all the words deserted her.

“That sounds like a lot to carry around,” he said softly.

She nodded. _It is,_ she wanted to say. But her voice didn’t seem to be working anymore.

“I understand not being able to talk about it,” he continued. “Or not having anyone you think you _can_ talk to. But I hope the next time you need somebody to listen, you’ll give me a call.”

“That’s nice of you to offer,” she whispered woodenly.

“I’m not trying to be nice, Nile.”

She looked up at him. There was no smile on his face anymore. Just a seriousness in his eyes she’d never seen before.

“I don’t want you to have to go through anything like what I put myself through. Okay? So if I can help you… I want to do it for you. Not because I’m trying to be nice. But because I want better for you.”

“I appreciate that. I do.”

“So you’ll call sometime?”

Nile chewed on the inside of her lip, searching his face and taking in its strange new openness. He had gone from a cautionary tale to perhaps the closest friend she’d ever had.

“I’ll try,” she said finally.

“That’s the best I can get? Come on now.”

He was smiling as he teased her, but she could sense an undercurrent of desperation.

“Fine,” she sighed, giving in. “I will call sometime. I promise.”

“Good. I’ll look forward to it.”

He meant what he was saying—she could see it there in his eyes. And she meant it too.

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s hoping the Southerner who wrote this prompt approves of the fic. I myself am a Northern gal, but I noticed the prompt has been sitting there unfilled for a while, and I couldn’t resist the pull (especially given the _Nighthawks_ reference, very nice). I hope I filled it to your satisfaction. Thanks so much for reading. :)
> 
> As ever, comments are what keep me writing—and hopefully improving! xx


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